


Like Real Human Beings

by AstroGirl



Category: Doctor Who (1963), The Good Place (TV)
Genre: (possibly slightly underage) drinking, Afterlives, Crossover, Gen, discussions about the nature of time, friendly conversation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-07
Updated: 2020-06-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:14:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24597340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstroGirl/pseuds/AstroGirl
Summary: Zoe and Michael sitting in a bar, drinking and talking.  Like real human beings.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 18
Collections: A Ficathon Goes Into A Bar





	Like Real Human Beings

**Author's Note:**

> The was written for the always entertaining challenge of A Ficathon Goes Into a Bar. Note: This contains spoilers through the final episode of _The Good Place_ , and at least kind of assumes you know how Zoe ends her travels with the Doctor.

"Do you know," says Zoe, "I'm really quite enjoying this!"

She is. She wasn't certain, at first, whether she was making a mistake in telling the Doctor and Jamie to go and investigate what the bartender told them about possible alien activity by themselves while she stayed here to enjoy the bar a little longer, but she's positive now that it was a good idea. She's very much enjoying the fizzy, sociable feeling the alcohol is giving her, and while she does recognize that her cognitive faculties are _slightly_ impaired, they're still more than good enough for her to calculate the rate at which she is metabolizing the substance -- making allowance for her low body weight, of course, and her lack of tolerance -- and to calibrate her intake to keep her in this pleasant state without risking any further temporary cognitive degradation.

She takes another small sip and gives her new acquaintance a happy smile.

Michael smiles back at her. He's an odd, interesting person. Tall (and not only compared to Zoe, as so many people are), and lanky. White-haired and bespectacled. (The latter being something Zoe's always found odd. Even in her own time, there are so many people who still insist on spectacles, when laser eye surgery has been available since... well, since the time zone she's currently in. Maybe she'll ask him about that later, why he hasn't bothered having his eyes fixed, when it would clearly be the logical thing to do.) He's also wearing a tie much like the ones the Doctor wears, only considerably more colorful. He reminds her a little of the Doctor, too, somehow. They don't _look_ anything alike, but there's something about him... Perhaps it's simply the way he seems so interested in everything around him, and so willing to engage in a silly, friendly conversation with a complete stranger.

"Me, too," he says. "I always feel strangely at home in bars. I have no idea why."

"This is the first time I've ever been in one," Zoe says. "As a customer, at any rate." She doesn't imagine that stopping in briefly to remind people that it's time to get back to work counts, particularly.

"Don't tell me you're drinking on a fake ID," says Michael, although he sounds more amused than judgmental. "Time was, you'd get docked a few points for that one."

Oh, yes. There are limits to the legal age for consuming alcohol here. That perhaps explains the way the Doctor made a point of distracting the barman when she ordered her first drink. She isn't certain what the "points" Michael is referring to are meant to be, but no doubt they have something to do with the local laws. "All right," she says. "I won't tell you."

"Oh, no, does this mean I'm contributing to your..." He flails one gawky arm, as if grasping for the right phrase, "your moral corruption, or something? That's... kind of ironic, actually, now that I think about it." He laughs. He has a very nice laugh. Ridiculous. But very nice.

"No, no it's nothing like that," Zoe says, although now that _she_ thinks about it, she might not actually meet the legal criteria, with or without the identification to prove it. Then again, if they're going to be mathematical about it, her age is currently a negative number. Which seems to her a much funnier idea than it ought to be, somehow. "It's just, well. Where I was brought up, they didn't much approve of this sort of thing."

"Really? You don't _sound_ like you're from Utah."

She pauses, trying to think what this period's equivalent would be. History is very much not her subject, but she's sure she has read something relevant... Ah. "It was like... a sort of boarding school. We were taught that alcohol consumption is an unnecessary impediment to proper neural function, and that social activities are merely distractions from useful study."

"Wow," he says, his voice a dry, sympathetic drawl. "That sounds fun."

"It really wasn't." She takes another sip, even though it isn't quite time for one yet. "Although I did always find the subject matter interesting. I _do_ love learning things. Only now I'm learning that there are more things to learn about than the ones I was taught. If you see what I mean?"

She doesn't think she put that very well, actually, but he's nodding as if he understands it, anyway. "Oh, yeah," he says. "Like... human things."

"Yes, exactly!" She gives him a big smile, and takes another swallow of her drink. Rather a large one, really. Oops. "Human things. I've been traveling, you know. It's been wonderfully exciting! Seeing all kinds of things I never even knew existed. Meeting new people. Making _friends_. It's not that I didn't like my co-workers on the Wheel, you know, but with the people I'm traveling with, well, it's _different_. I suppose when you've been through so much with people you start to feel..." Oh, bother. She's so good with numbers, but words for this sort of thing are much more difficult. 

Michael, however, is right there to help her out. "A connection," he says, quietly.

"Yes. Yes, that's it. A connection!"

He beams at her, and his smile makes her feel like she's just solved a particularly difficult set of quantum gravity equations. Oh, dear, is she _blushing_? She ducks her head a little. 

"Anyway," she says, "it's been very exciting, learning all the... the human things. I know this--" She raises her glass and gestures around the bar. "--probably seems very ordinary to you, but for me it's really quite fantastic."

"Oh, man," he says. "You have no _idea_ how exciting this is to me. This... human stuff. I mean, look at this!" He raises his own glass, holding it out to her for her inspection. "It's crappy beer!" He sounds bizarrely pleased by the fact, and she can't help grinning again in response. He takes a sip of it and makes a face that's somehow simultaneously delighted and repulsed. "Yup, tastes like crappy beer. It's always been crappy beer. It will always _be_ crappy beer. But..." He takes another drink from the glass, and it turns out that the facial expression from last time, improbably, is perfectly replicable. "But, I don't know. It tastes so... _different_ now! So much more _real_. It tastes like... like life. Human taste buds, man! _Human taste buds_. They're _amazing_. Seriously, I don't know how humans aren't walking around all day just thinking about how amazing their taste buds are. I certainly haven't managed it yet."

Zoe takes another sip of her own drink -- something called a "mojito," which comes with herbs of no nutritional value whatsoever -- and considers it. "Mine is really rather tasty," she says. "Would you like some?"

He looks at her glass for a moment. "Yes," he says. "Yes, I would." But instead of sipping from her nearly-empty drink, he waves for the attention of the barman. "Two more mojitos, please, for me and my new drinking buddy!"

Zoe finds herself going slightly pink again. She has a "drinking buddy!" That's also wonderfully new and exciting!

"I gotta tell you," Michael says, "I was a little worried I'd be lonely here. Because all my friends are... Well, they're not here. And I miss them a lot. But I am having _the time of my life_. Or the... Maybe it's the life of my life? The life of my time?" He laughs again, an absurd, delightful bark of a laugh. "I'm having a life! Me!"

"Me too!" says Zoe, although, she realizes as she does so, she's almost closer to shouting it. "That's exactly what I'm doing!"

Michael picks up his glass. "To having a life!" He holds the glass out to her, looking expectant. Tentatively, not entirely certain of the custom, she picks hers up and holds it out, too. He clinks the rims of their drinking vessels together and swallows what's left in his. 

She follows suit, then laughs as she picks a spring of mint out of her teeth.

Then the bartender puts another mojito down in front of her, so she drinks some of that, too.

"Seriously," says Michael, "I haven't had this much fun in Bearimys."

"In what?" Zoe frowns. Is the alcohol beginning to affect her hearing? Should she stop? She takes another sip, but only a very small one.

"Bearimys," says Michael. "It's... oh, never mind."

"No! I want to know." Zoe folds her arms and pouts. "I like learning things, remember?"

Michael sighs, although not in an unfriendly fashion. "Okay, but you're not going to understand it."

"Well, now I'm just insulted."

"Okay, fine. But you're not allowed to ask how I know, all right?"

Zoe considers that for a moment, uncertain how she feels about this particular provision. "Well," she says finally, "I suppose I _am_ learning to be comfortable with the idea of not actually knowing everything."

Michael flashes her a smile, his teeth gleaming startlingly white in the dim lighting of the bar. "Hey, personal growth! Good for you. That attitude will really help you out later on."

"I do still want to know this, though."

"Okay, look." Michael grabs a slightly soggy napkin, then spends several moments rapidly patting his pockets before pulling out a primitive writing implement. 

"Here. This is what time is, right? Jeremy Bearimy. We call it that because it looks like... Well, it looks like the name Jeremy Bearimy." He writes something in a flowing archaic script Zoe can barely read. 

"That says Jeremy Bearimy?" she asks, a little skeptical.

"Yes."

"And that's what time is?"

"Yes. See, I said you weren't going to understand it."

"Well, you haven't explained it yet!" Zoe begins to cross her arms again, realizes she never uncrossed them the first time, and gives them a sort of emphatic bounce before uncrossing them.

"It's not linear, time. It goes round and round, like this." He traces the writing implement over the loops and curves. 

Zoe eyes the diagram, if that's truly what it is. "In a series of endlessly repeating loops?"

Michael actually looks a little relieved. "Yes! Exactly! Oh, I'm so glad you understa--"

"Wait, though." Zoe frowns. "What's this?" She points to the dot over what might possibly be a letter i. "It's non-continuous. That can't be right."

"Oh, god," he groans. "Can we... Can we not think about the dot? Trust me, nothing good happens when you think about the dot."

"And I know time is non-linear, of course. But how do you reconcile this conception of it with the precepts of General and Special Relativity?"

"How do you... what?" Michael stares at the napkin as if he's expecting to see something on it other than what he put there.

Zoe makes a small, impatient noise. Surely _she_ isn't the one being unclear. "Reconcile it with the precepts of Special and General Relativity! Not to mention the implications it would have for the conscious experience of time. Really, this can't possibly be any more than the crudest possible representation of temporal structure. It's completely lacking in any sort of explanatory power at all!"

"I... I don't know what to tell you, Zoe." He taps a finger against the drawing, as if calling her attention back to it will change her assessment of it somehow, even though she now has it committed to memory and hardly needs to look at it again. "It's just... Jeremy Bearimy. I've never figured out how to explain it any better than that. Believe me, I've tried."

Zoe rolls her eyes. She feels a sort of exasperated warmth towards this man that's not entirely unfamiliar. "Honestly," she says. "You're as bad as the Doctor."

Michael blinks. He tilts his head at her. He looks down at the unhelpful napkin. He looks back up at her. "Wait... Did you say the Doctor? As in... _the_ Doctor? Weird guy, travels around in a phone booth kinda thing?"

Now it's Zoe's turn to blink. "Yes! That's the Doctor. Have you met him?" She's fairly certain he had already left the bar when Michael arrived.

"Have I _met_ him?" Michael lets out a gaspy little laugh. "Oh, man, that guy." He leans forward a little, as if about to impart some deeply interesting secret. "Every intelligent species is supposed to have its own afterlife, right? All totally separate, different administrations, different everything. It's not even supposed to be physically possible to get from one to the other. Except _this_ guy, the Doctor... He figured it out somehow! No idea how. Even Janet was never able to explain it, and if you knew Janet, you'd know how unbelievably weird that is. But he just keeps popping over into the human one from wherever he's actually supposed to be. Checking up on his friends and stuff. Which I guess I can't really argue with, but come on, he could at least be a little discreet about it. Not that he isn't fun to have around." He chuckles. "I remember this one time, Eleanor and I--"

"Hang on!" Zoe interrupts him. "What do you mean, 'afterlife'?"

"Um," says Michael. He looks sheepish for a moment. "Nothing, never mind. Forget I said anything. In fact, I didn't say anything. At all. You must be hallucinating. Are you sure that's actually mint?" He picks up his mojito and sniffs at it.

"Yes, I'm sure," says Zoe. "And don't try to deny it. I have an eidetic memory, and I remember every word you just said. You said the Doctor visits humans in the afterlife. Which cannot possibly be true, because one, there's no such thing as an afterlife. It's a primitive superstition. And two, even if there _was_ an afterlife, the Doctor wouldn't be in it, because he isn't dead yet!" Satisfied with this logic, Zoe leans back in her seat and gives Michael a smug, challenging look. 

"Okay, one, yes there is. And, two, this is what I've been trying to tell you! Jeremy Bearimy!"

"Oh, you... You're impossible!"

"Yeah, you're not the first person to say that."

"Aren't I?" Zoe leans forward and taps a random place on the "Jeremy Bearimy" curve. "If time is structured in this fashion, then any point can arbitrarily be designated as the first." She gives him another smug look, only slightly interrupted by a giggle she can't quite seem to suppress.

"Touché." 

He doesn't look displeased by her logical victory, which makes her more willing, somehow, to admit to how incomplete it is. "Mostly, I still feel very confused."

"Confused isn't bad," Michael says. "Confused is really human."

"Is it?" Zoe contemplates that for a moment, and finds herself smiling again. "You know, I suppose it is!" After all, computers never find themselves confused, do they?

Michael lifts his glass again. "To human feelings, and human failings," he says.

"To confusion," she says. Then, uncertain, "Did I do that right?"

"You did fine," he says, and they both drink.

Michael starts to say something else, when they're interrupted by a voice calling from across the room. "Zoe! Ach, Zoe!" It's Jamie, of course, standing just inside the door and waving his arms for her attention. "The Doctor said to come and collect ye! He needs your help with..." His brow wrinkles a little. He's clearly having trouble remembering precisely what the Doctor said. Zoe feels a pleasant little rush of affection for him. "…with some kind of calculatin'!"

She waves back. "I'll be there in a moment!" 

She turns back to Michael. "Well. It sounds like I'm needed."

He looks a little disappointed, but the smile he gives her is... Honestly, she isn't sure how to describe it. Wise, perhaps. Or gentle. "Well, when people need you..." He doesn't finish the thought, but she supposes he doesn't have to.

"Honestly," she says, "I don't know what they'd do without me." 

They smile at each other for a moment, then Zoe stands and holds out her hand. He takes it and shakes. His grip is warm. 

"It was very nice meeting you," she said. "Even if you are are _very_ strange, and clearly don't understand the fundamental nature of time."

"Ditto," he says. "Hey, listen, just a thought, but... maybe we could hang out again sometime?"

He sounds so hopeful that she hates to disappoint him, but... "I'd like that, but I'm afraid I'm not going to be here very long."

"Here in Arizona?"

"Here in early 21st century Earth," she says. And, in response to the look on his face, "Well, there. Now we're both confused."

"Oh, well," he says. "Maybe some other time. Ooh, I know. Look me up after we're dead." Ridiculously, he sounds entirely earnest about this. "We can have a drink then. I really don't think you'll have too much trouble getting through everything." 

Zoe has no idea what he means by that last part. Or, really, what he means by any of it. But it seems kindly meant, so she simply says, "Thank you. If, against all logic, the afterlife _does_ turn out to be an empirical fact, I shall certainly look you up there."

"Good," says Michael. "Because, you know, you still owe me a mojito."

She gives him one last smile, and turns to where Jamie is still standing impatiently by the door. 

**

EPILOG

Zoe lives. She lives, and she learns, and she forgets.

She dies.

She dies, and she learns and she forgets. She learns and she forgets. She learns. And she remembers.

One day, on the upward stroke of the B, she hands a mojito to someone she once met in a bar, and the two of them drink to life, to learning, to humanity, to absent friends, and to at least one of them finally understanding the true nature of time.

And one day, in the very center of the dot on the i, she finds a door. It's not green, but phone box blue, and behind it is someone she remembers very well indeed, someone who greets her with a hug, and a smile, and an interrupted journey ready to resume. She doesn't even need to stow away this time. 

She wonders what everyone else's afterlives will be like. She can't wait to find out.

How very exciting it is, to know she _still_ doesn't know everything yet.


End file.
